A Delicate Situation

Secretary of State Hughes attempted to ease the Mexican situation (TIME, Jan. 7 et seq.) without damage to U. S. interests and without hostilities. He met with difficulties. The light cruiser Tacoma, which has been patrolling the Mexican coast for some time, after putting in at Galveston, ran aground on Blanquilla Reef on its return to Vera Cruz, Rebel capital. There are normally five different lights visible at that point, but it is believed that these were extinguished by the Rebels. The greater part of the crew was taken ashore. The cruiser, still manned by a small complement, lay in only two fathoms of water, and was feared to be a total loss. She is one of the older vessels of her type, belonging to the vintage of 1904.

Meanwhile Cabinet meetings in Washington strove to find a course that would avoid all shoals and reefs for the ship of state. Rebel gunboats had blockaded Tampico, 300 miles from Vera Cruz, and threatened to hold up American shipping going to and from the oil fields. After the Cabinet meetings, Secretary Hughes consulted with representatives of the Petroleum Producers in Mexico.

It was decided to send the light cruiser Richmond, with Admiral Magruder, to Vera Cruz from Panama. Two days later the Omaha and six destroyers were ordered to follow. The Omaha and Richmond are two of the most modern and fastest units of the light cruiser fleet, commissioned within a year.

Later the Richmond was ordered to Tampico to raise the Rebel blockade.

Meanwhile Secretary Hughes prevailed on acting Governor Davidson of Texas to permit Mexican Government troops to traverse part of Texas in passing from one field of operations against the Rebels to another. The ticklishness of the situation is that Americans in Mexico or along the border may suffer if the ire of either faction is aroused. So far Mr. Hughes has supported the recognized Obregon Government; it is impossible to say how long the policy may be continued without arousing the active enmity of the Rebels.

"Panama Straits"

Secretary of War Weeks and Secretary of the Navy Denby have been casting around for a successful means of defending the Panama Canal. 11 the naval manoeuvres this year (se Page 5), as in the manoeuvres a year ago, the difficulties of defending the Canal have been apparent. The secretaries believe that the defenses must be improved. But a gentleman who arrived from France last week proposed a plan which would take out by the root many difficulties of Canal defense. Lieutenant Colonel Phillippe Bunau-Varilla, engineer, editor, diplomat soldier of fortune, veteran of the World War, in which he lost a leg, and coworker of Ferdinand de Lesseps who almost built the Panama Canal French private companies, has come back to his first love. He wants to substitute a billion-dollar, sea-level strait, 1,000 feet wide at the bottom for the present lock canal built by the U. S. Government under President Roosevelt.

He opened his campaign for this objective with a notable speech to th. Cincinnati Commercial Club, before which, exactly 23 years ago, he preached the necessity for the Panama route instead of the Nicaraguan. At time he also advocated a sea-level strait instead of a lock canal. The Panama route was chosen but the sea-level program was abandoned on account of expense.

With one victory to his credit wants another. His argument is this: From a military standpoint the present canal is weak: its locks may be broken by bombardment from sea or air; an earthquake such as that of 1882 might break Gatun dam and empty Gatun lake; a ship might be sunk in one of the locks where it could not be blown up without ruining the works. From a commercial standpoint he maintains that the Canal will become inadequate, estimating that it will have a traffic of 45,000,000 tons in 1934, and 135,000,000 tons in 1944, based on a normal traffic of 15,000,000 tons at present (last year, under unusual conditions, the traffic was 24,000,000 tons) ; the Canal's limitation at present is 126,000,000 tons because it is dependent for water on the Chagres river and its traffic, in a year of drought such as 1905, much less-77,000,000 tons.

To eliminate these disadvantages he proposes a sea-level strait conforming to the following conditions:

1) Total elimination of all locks, dams, etc., which can accidentally or willfully be crippled.

2) Total elimination of any dependence on rainfall by allowing the canal to be filled entirely by the sea.

3) A "limitless" capacity for traffic by means of a 1,000-ft. channel, 50 ft. deep at low tide, such that ships can sail directly through without waiting.

4) Possibility of blasting any sunken ship out of the way without damaging the canal.

5) Construction of the new strait on the site of the present canal without interrupting traffic. This he calculates could be done in about 20 years by setting 50 dredges to work widening and deepening the channel.

6) Preventing all danger of slides in Culebra Cut by a series of concrete monoliths sunk through the sliding strata to solid rock below.

7) Freedom from any difficulty to navigation from differences in the tidal levels of the two oceans. The maximum difference of water level would not, he declared, produce a current of more than 3.5 knots in a 1,000-ft. channel 50 ft. deep.

8) Complete solution of the danger of floods in the Chagres River (now emptying into Gatun Lake) by building a large canal on each side of the proposed strait, carrying the entire drainage into the sea.

9) Not a cent of cost to the American people for the new strait. The bill for the strait, according to Color Bunau-Varilla, would be: for excavating 1,100,000,000 cubic yards of earth for the main channel, $700,000,000; for preventing slides in Culebra Cut, $150,000,000; for excavating 500,000,000 cubic yards of earth to make flood channels for the Chagres River, $150,000,000; total, $1,000,000,000.

The money would be raised on the present canal's earnings, about $1 a ton on the ships passing. On the basis of 24,000,000 tons a year the canal's income is as many dollars. From this must be subtracted about $7,500,000 for operating expenses and about $8,000,000 for interest on the present investment, leaving $8,000,000 to pay interest on a new borrowing of $200,000,000 at 4%. By the time traffic reaches 64,000,000 tons a year the interest would be earned on a total new borrowing of $1,000,000,000. "Very likely," said the Colonel, "the revenues will pay in advance the total cost when half the work has been done."

If engineers and commerce experts agree with Colonel Bunau-Varilla's figures the matter would seem comparatively simple. The Colonel concluded: "If any one has objections to offer, they must be stated in figures of arithmetic, and not in figures of speech, as has always been done up to the present."